Inventory of the Papers of Park Elliott
Dietz for the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography

Physical Characteristics

16 boxes (6.7 linear feet)

Language

English

Abstract

Most of this collection relates to Park Dietz' tenure on the
Attorney General's Commission on Pornography (AGCP), which conducted a year-long study
of the effects of pornography in the United States. The collection includes commission
memoranda, correspondence, transcripts of testimony, reports prepared for the
commission, and various drafts of portions of the final report written by the
commissioners themselves.

Preferred Citation

Park Elliott Dietz (A.B. Cornell; M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D. Johns Hopkins) joined the faculty
of the University of Virginia School of Law in 1982, serving simultaneously as medical
director of the University's Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy. In 1988 he
moved to California to practice and teach psychiatry. In 1985, while at the University,
he was appointed by then-Attorney General Edwin Meese to serve on the Attorney General's
Commission on Pornography (AGCP). The commission conducted a year-long study of the
effects of pornography in the United States, and made a number of recommendations in its
report, published in July 1986. Most of this collection relates to Dietz' tenure on the
commission. At the end of the commission's tenure, the Department of Justice gave Dietz
a collection of pornographic literature which had been used in the commission's work. He
deposited that collection with the Law Library in 1986, and, upon his 1988 departure
from the University, donated it to the library, along with the materials comprising this
particular collection. These research materials were removed from the collection in
1996.

This collection of 16 boxes (6.7 linear feet), contains material dating as far back as
1973, and as recently as 1988, but most of it was produced during the AGCP's tenure in
1985-86, and includes commission memoranda, correspondence, transcripts of testimony,
reports prepared for the commission, and various drafts of portions of the final report
written by the commissioners themselves. Approximately three-quarters of these papers
came to the library unfoldered.

In processing, a distinction has been made between official AGCP materials and Dietz'
personal files, most of which related to the commission's work as well. This distinction
was at times hard to maintain, but in general the papers in containers 1-10 are either
material distributed to all commissioners as part of the AGCP's official business, or
correspondence between the commissioners and with outsiders relating to the commission's
work. The submissions and testimony from the various public hearings are particularly
voluminous, as are the reports concerning the role played by organized crime in the
distribution of pornography.

The first four folders in container 11 relate to the reaction generated by the report
and the commission's deliberations, primarily from those opposed. The rest of container
11 and the remainder of the collection comprises material collected by Dietz but not
necessarily sent to all commissioners or even related to the commission's work. These
include correspondence of Dietz and his wife Laura, particularly after the AGCP report
had been released, and materials relating to the ongoing campaign against pornography in
which Laura Dietz appears to have taken a special interest. The last two folders in
container 15 and all of container 16 hold clippings, some specifically relating to the
commission or its report, and some more generally related to pornography.